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While worshipped as semi-divine in Montreal and certainly among the goaltending glorieux in the NHL firmament of marvellous asked men, Patrick Roy was no angel.

Colorado Avalanche head coach Patrick Roy arrived for Tuesday night's game against the Leafs $10,000 lighter in the wallet from a league fine for his screaming match with Anaheim's Bruce Boudreau in the season opener. (Ron Chenoy / USA TODAY)

Diabolical might more aptly describe his temperament, hot-headed, a pile of kindling looking for a match.

Roy left the Canadiens in a fit of fury, indignant that then-coach Mario Tremblay left him in the net for a night of horrors when he gave up nine goals in a humiliating 11-0 loss to the Red Wings. Who can forget an angry Roy vowing to owner Ronald Corey — sitting behind the bench — that he’d played his last game for the Habs. That was Dec. 2, 1995 and Roy was a man of his word, forthwith orchestrating a trade to Colorado where he’d win another two Stanley Cups to go with the pair of championship rings he already owned and the first-ballot Hall of Fame induction still to come.

He has not mellowed.

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When Roy led the Avalanche into Toronto on Tuesday as a novice NHL coach — two undefeated clubs clashing — he arrived in a thundercloud of controversy, $10,000 lighter in the wallet from a league fine, and the centre of intense media scrutiny.

It is a rare occasion when the Toronto hockey corps is more preoccupied with the opposing team’s coach than documenting every twitch and snort and spit-blob emanating from the Maple Leafs during the morning skate on game day.

But this, of course, was Roy, possibly the most entertaining off-ice thing to hit the NHL since Tampa Bay introduced scantily-clad cheerleaders to the sport a dozen years ago — if you go for that kind of cheek.

Roy is no flash-in-the-pan sideline gimmick, although there might indeed be some gimmickry to go with the glitz he’s brought to the job. This is a team that’s missed the playoffs three years in a row, four times out of the last five seasons, bottom-feeder in the Western Conference when the lockout-shortened schedule wound to a close in April. It’s been a long time since the once-formidable Avs led any sports newscast or grabbed front-page coverage in football-frenzied Denver, much less rival cities across the continent. That changed lickety-split last week as Roy pretty much single-handedly switched the channel back to hockey in the Mile High City right out of the chute as star of his own behind-the-bench reality show.

While no chairs were hurled and no animals were hurt, it was a histrionic hissy tilt between Roy and Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau in the dying tick-tock of Colorado’s home opener, Roy clearly the provocateur, zero to ballistic at Mach 5, the two men separated only by a glass partition and stanchion, both of which tilted precariously as Roy pounded from his side.

Welcome back, Patrick.

“Things like this happen sometime,” Roy told a massive media scrum in the Air Canada Centre corridor after coming off the ice Tuesday morning. “I’m very passionate.”

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He professed reluctance to revisit the incident for reporters, but then went there himself.

“Everything is going to be calculated,” he explained, meaning that he’ll pick his high-C Mel Gibson moments. “I learned a lot from my junior days, that you have to control those emotions. It’s been very easy and it will be easy. I’m always going to be really calm when the game is on the line.”

During those junior days, eight years with the Quebec Remparts, of which he was part owner, Roy was a chronic offender, regularly dipping into his pocket to pay for fines levied as a result of his combustible temper and chronically intemperate — but always quote-worthy — remarks.

Let’s just say Roy could well afford it, having amassed a fortune during his 18-year NHL career estimated at around $83 million.

The Pepsi Centre screaming match, however, might have been a wee bit contrived, as Roy reintroduced himself to the public and the hockey universe.

Mere moments from a 6-1 win, Roy sent out a fourth line that featured two Avalanche enforcers, obviously tasked with avenging what the coach thought was an unnecessary knee-on-knee hit against prize rookie Nathan MacKinnon, first overall pick in the 2013 entry draft. That infuriated Boudreau — who afterwards called Roy “bush league.”

Players had a front-row seat as the hammy drama unfolded.

“I felt like a kid again,” chuckles centre Matt Duchene, of watching the theatrics between Roy and Boudreau, when it appeared very much like the former might climb over the glass to punch out the latter. This is a goalie, recall, who once famously traded blows with his opposite number, Mike Vernon, during an on-ice melee.

“I felt like I was watching him fight Vernon back in the day,” Duchene continues. “It was really funny. I had a hard time not laughing through that whole thing. Everybody was so serious and I was trying not to laugh.”

Every player got the subtext message.

Alex Tanguay, the returning Av who played with Roy in another era, recognizes the signature ferocity. “Patrick is driven by winning. I remember playing with him and seeing the intensity on his face before a game. I saw him before the first game (last week), walking around, and his face was very similar to what it was as a player.”

But he’s not a player anymore. At age 48, the hair is greying, the grooves around his mouth deepening. Strange to realize Roy retired a whole decade ago, his No. 33 jersey raised to the rafters in both Montreal and Denver.

Legendary players more often than not don’t make good coaches. They’re impatient with those who can’t do what came so easily to them. They don’t understand average. Roy professes to be coping well with the challenge of transition. “It’s weird because I don’t think it’s that challenging, to be honest with you. What’s challenging is the time — you’re up at six in the morning, you’re at the rink at quarter-to-seven, and you leave at six, seven, eight o’clock at night. It’s not everyone who wants to spend that time but I have no problem with it. It’s easy for me.”

The harder adjustment is observing rather than participating and holding the destiny of a game in his own hands as a player. “I was nervous at the start of the game, when the puck dropped or if I was making the first save. Sometimes now, you’re more nervous because you wish you could be out there.” He offers that delinquent boy grin of his. “But I don’t think you’d want me to be out there.”

What hasn’t changed is the roar of the crowd, the smells of the rink, the restlessness in the dressing room.

“It’s fun to be part of it, in the building. That’s what I love about this game, whether I’m on the ice or behind the bench. It’s the exact same thing.”

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